​A Deep Sense of Foreboding

Non-MAGA Republicans, Democrats and most Canadians await the Nov. 5 presidential election with a deep sense of foreboding. Even Kamala Harris enthusiasts are nervous.

There is still much hope, all is not lost, but it does seem likely that the most dictatorial leader in the history of democratic nations could well be in a position, once again, to seize the reins of office for the most powerful nation on Planet Earth.

Donald J. Trump has a lengthy list of negative credentials which speak poorly of his basic human decency. The most serious of these include the following:
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• Last May, a jury found Trump guilty of thirty-four felony charges. Also, last May, a jury concluded that Trump had sexually assaulted and defamed writer E. Jean Caroll. The court also awarded her $5 million, and then she was later awarded a further $83 million in damages. Trump has myriad appeals of his criminal convictions and is appealing $500 million in civil judgments. Readers of this blog column might well ask if this represents equal justice under the law.
  
  
• Trump has repeatedly threatened to mobilize the U.S. National Guard and American troops against his political enemies. He spreads fear about what he calls “the enemy within.”
  
  
• The former president has yet to accept that he lost the 2020 election. Few can forget the terrible scenes from Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump mobilized his armed supporters to attack the Capitol building in Washington. VP Harris noted this week at her massive rally of supporters at the Ellipse (the very place where Trump had called out his mob) that Trump’s own staff told him repeatedly that the mob wanted to hang his own Vice President, Mike Pence. Trump is reliably reported to have said: “So what.”
  
  
• At the major Trump rally this week at Madison Square Garden in New York, comedian Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico “a floating island of garbage.” To this a spokesperson for the Trump campaign made an almost casual disavowal of the comment. We shall see below that this incident soon became a major negative for both the Trump and Harris campaigns.
  
  
• John Kelly, former Trump chief of staff and a retired Marine general has said that Trump “fits the general definition of fascist.” This reminds us of the horrendous threat that Trump has made in his anti-immigrant campaign rhetoric. He promises to conduct the largest ever deportation of immigrants from the USA., and perhaps the entire world.

Harris has shown herself to be politically astute and durable, leading an impressive recovery for the Democratic Party after disaster appeared imminent following President Biden’s very weak performance in the first presidential debate. When President Joe Biden soon withdrew from the 2024 presidential race, Vice-President Harris did an extraordinary job of pulling together her own campaign in a matter of weeks.

Harris soon showed her skills in her debate with Trump. Her performance was good enough for Trump to produce his lame explanation of his refusal to have a second debate, saying that the loser in a debate with “the champion” always wants a rematch.

At the end of her campaign Kamala showed another tremendous feat of organization and strength with her massive rally in Washington, DC.

Nonetheless, there is some downside to Harris’ performance in the campaign to date:
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She made an obvious mistake in choosing Tim Waltz as her running mate. She quickly appeared nervous of Waltz, when she sheltered him from the media and chose not to make him a full partner on the ticket. This gave the voters a reason to doubt that Waltz would be up to the job of Vice-President let alone taking over as President if anything ever happened to a President Harris.

The eloquent Josh Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania would have been a stronger choice as Harris’ running mate. It was Shapiro who was obliged to “clean up” after President Biden stepped clumsily into the debate about comedian Heathcliffe referring to Puerto Rico as an “island of garbage.”
 
Biden did Harris no favors by commenting that “the only garbage I see floating out there is his (Trump’s) supporters.” Trump, the master of theatrics, then appeared in a bright orange vest resembling those worn by sanitation workers, saying “250 million Americans are not garbage.”
The garbage issue and racism became a key late campaign issue for both sides, with some commentators stating that Trump had come out on top.

Such quick responses by Trump overshadowed the weaknesses of his own choice of running mate, Senator J.D. Vance, who had argued that the U.S. is being run by “a bunch of childless cat ladies.” Both Trump and Vance had demeaned themselves by alleging that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating people’s pets.

Harris made the reproductive rights of women a centerpiece of her campaign. She rightfully objected to the fact that many U.S. states have legislation banning abortion even in cases where women have been raped or are victims of incest. Nonetheless, Kamala underestimated the degree of conservatism of many parts of the States, particularly the South, on abortion and reproductive rights.

Harris came late in her late campaign to give greater attention to both male Black and White working-class workers, and especially young Black men. She had already left the impression that her primary emphasis was on women voters.

Kamala did not help this impression by symbolically referring often to her mother’s key role in her upbringing and her values.

Given Trump’s record of not being an advocate of the Black Civil Rights movement, it is surprising that polls are showing him receiving much stronger support from Black voters this time, especially young Black voters.

Harris’ speeches were strong and noble in many ways. But in the face of Trump’s gatling gun speaking style Harris did not attain the level of inspiration of former  Barack Obama’s “Audacity of hope” message, or John F. Kennedy’s “We have nothing to fear but fear itself,” or of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech in which he called for the end to racism in the U.S.A.
 
Kamala Harris can count on the support of almost all Canadians, with the possible exception of Pierre Poilievre, the right wing Canadian Conservative leader who appears to be a bird of the same feather as Trump. Apart from general fears of Trump having an erratic finger on the nuclear button, Canadians’ greatest fears are of his proposed 10 per cent tariff on all U.S. imports. There are also plenty of signs that, in the past, Trump enjoyed throwing his weight around with Canadian leaders and belittling Canadian rich cultural and linguistic strength.

It will be a tragedy if Donald J. Trump wakes up next week as the President-elect of the U.S.A. At this point, progressive-leaning people everywhere are hoping that Kamala Harris’ campaign will be successful, but if Trump wins, the consequences will be the story for another day.